Police Union wants training officer out

02/22/2005

William Kaempffer , Register Staff

NEW HAVEN -- Kay Codish and the city police she is in charge of training haven't always seen eye to eye. Now the police union is calling for her resignation because of comments she made to the Board of Aldermen about police officers and prejudice — and how six months of training cannot overcome deep-seated hatred.

"Kay Codish should resign from her position because she’s acknowledged that she’s failed.

Your training director said that you have officers on the job that hate people? There’s a lot of irate members here and they need an explanation," Sgt. Louis Cavalier, the union president, said Monday.

The ire at police headquarters stems from remarks Codish made last week at City Hall during a meeting about police training and the use of deadly force.

Codish was there with Police Chief Francisco Ortiz Jr. and other members of the training division answering questions from the Public Safety Committee.

Cavalier and other police officers took offense to Codish’s response to complaints from several aldermen that some police officers are skilled mediators, while others show up at scenes full of attitude and abusiveness.

Codish responded, "We can train and train and train" and recruits can "say all the right things" at the academy … "but if in their heart, they hate whoever they hate," that is difficult to change.

Codish could not be reached for comment Monday. A message was left at the academy and on her department pager.

A message left for Ortiz was not immediately returned.

The conflict comes at an inopportune time, as the police union and command staff try to mend fences. Last month, the rank-and-file took a vote of no confidence against Ortiz amid complaints about his managerial style and response to recent police-involved shootings.

The vote prompted a meeting among the command staff, union, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and other top city officials earlier this month.

Derek Slap, spokesman for DeStefano, said the mayor expected whatever issues there were could be "discussed and dealt with" between the chief and the union.

"Ultimately, she reports to the chief, so it’s a police matter," Slap said.

In her 13-year tenure, Codish has had an uneasy and often strained relationship with the rank-and-file police.

Even before last week’s meeting, the union had asked the mayor to install a sworn police officer to head the academy and oversee Codish.

A civilian, Codish’s background was in community activism — not police training — when she took over in 1992. Before that, Codish worked as director of volunteer services for AIDS Project New Haven and director of the Office for Women in Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.

At the Police Department, she arrived as former Police Chief Nicholas Pastore was making sweeping changes to implement the community-policing model.

"When I first came on as director of training, the mandate I was given was to restructure the police academy" to make it less militaristic and more humane, she told the Board of Aldermen last week.

To that end, in addition to firearms, defensive tactics and criminal law, she implemented a curriculum that included visits to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, classroom lectures from prostitutes and dramatic plays about racial profiling and prejudice.

However, police officers for years complained that the academy focused too much on soup kitchens and not enough on tactics and self-defense.